


Smoke and...

by Temaris



Category: Labyrinth (1986)
Genre: Community: kink_bingo, F/M, Mirrors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-09
Updated: 2010-01-09
Packaged: 2017-10-06 00:41:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/47788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Temaris/pseuds/Temaris
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Be careful where you stand when you're surrounded by mirrors.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Smoke and...

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [](http://www.dreamwidth.org/userinfo.bml?user=kinkbingo)[**kinkbingo**](http://www.dreamwidth.org/userinfo.bml?user=kinkbingo), prompt: Mirrors
> 
> This didn't end up very kinky at all... With thanks to Aithine for the beta :)

  
  
  
  
**Entry tags:**   
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[fandom: labyrinth](http://temaris.livejournal.com/tag/fandom:+labyrinth), [stuff i wrote](http://temaris.livejournal.com/tag/stuff+i+wrote)  
  
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**Fic: Smoke and...**   
_

He takes a moment to admire the set-up. It's beautiful: complex, ingenious, and perfect. Years have passed, and even if she doesn't remember (and he knows she does) she will come to forget the things which held her back. Perfect, beautiful, contrary girl. He frowns a little. There are no guarantees that it won't end badly all over again. But then he will know; then he can try something different. Or rather, go back to the old ways.

The shadows pool around the room, adding edges to the light in the mirrors. Three mirrors, each set to reflect the others, and their light coming from nothing but their impossible possibilities. Time and pain and magic have built these.

There's nothing left to do now. Nothing but wait. Once she falls between the mirrors, it will begin.

***

Sarah tries not to hate clothes shopping; tries not to hate spending 'girl time' with her stepmother while back from college for Thanksgiving, but clothes shopping is torture, and on Black Friday, doubly so. She wants to make it better, she does, but the habits of hating everything her stepmother loves are hard to break.

"Try this one!" Her stepmother urges her with a happy smile. It's a peasant style skirt, soft and long, and Sarah smiles back. She's trying, and so Sarah will too: she can't imagine what it must pain the woman who prefers neat suits and classic skirts to compromise on this.

"Oh, it would go with this -- do you think?" And she snatches up a smocked gypsy style top, and holds the two against her.

"Try them on! I'll just be out here and you can show me."

Sarah nods and heads into the fitting rooms. They're not like the shops she's grown to love -- small incense scented places, with perhaps a single rust-spotted mirror half concealed behind a haphazardly hung velvet curtain. This is totally different, and it's not just the boxlike cubicle, or the mirrors. She shakes her head. She likes mirrors. There's always the chance of seeing the others. And her stepmother is just outside, waiting patiently.

She turns in the brightly lit room, with its sterile walls and lockable door, and the triple mirrors folding her into the distance, and hangs up the skirt and top.

Far away, one of her reflections turns and clasps her hands to her mouth, but Sarah doesn't see. She's ignoring the mirrors, and pulling off her boots and jeans to try on the skirt. It's a struggle to get it off the hanger, and she's tugging carefully, trying not to damage anything. The fabric distracts her -- so soft, almost like suede, and she holds it to her face, eyes closed.

One by one the reflections splinter out and away. Some try to flee, but they're bound in place as a peach rolls through, shattering each one as it passes. Some try to pick it up, kick it away, but only seem to accelerate its path. The closer ones are shouting, begging her to look up, but when she does, it's too late, even if she knew what to do. The peach falls out of the mirror, and she knows better; she's known better for five long years, and *still* she picks it up. The taste is rich and sweet. And the reflections explode into black, pulling her into the mirror, three ways.

***

"Hello, Sarah."

Sarah doesn't even need to open her eyes. She knows that voice. In more innocent days she'd recoiled from it, the arrogant inflection that somehow was too familiar, and not familiar enough. She's lying down; something soft, perhaps a bed, and she shifts.

"Hello, Jareth."

She opens her eyes. She knows he's there, but he's somewhere in the darkness pooled around her.

"Welcome back."

"You tricked me!" she says, but she doesn't sound convinced, and it's a child's defence, not strong enough for her now.

"You accepted my invitation: you picked up the peach, and bit into it." He pauses, pointedly not saying 'again'. "Do you want to go home, Sarah?"

There's a long silence between them. "What happens if I say yes?"

"Then home you will go."

She swallows. He's stepped closer, into the penumbra, and he's *exactly* as she remembers. Exotic, alien. Beautiful. Perhaps not exactly, she thinks, as her eyes travel idly downwards and leap away from his evident arousal, nothing hidden by those pale, tight breeches. Or perhaps it is her understanding that has changed.

"And -- " her voice cracks, she swallows, her peach flavoured lips dry -- "And if I say no?"

A quick smile lights his face, and he takes another step out of the darkness. "Then I will make you my queen, and show you all the glory this room can contain."

It's an offer she's had before. From him, no less, and she turned it down. Someone else had weighed on her conscience then, and she had not chosen to come to the Labyrinth. And, she'd been a child. Something that hid from her some of the traps that she skirted, half innocent, half aware.

"This room?"

"And all that is within it."

"Not the kingdom?"

"You want my kingdom too?" He sighs, rolling his eyes, but he's smiling all the while. "Fine, and the kingdom, and my hand in marriage too if you insist. Take it all. And then what will I have left?" He twists his hand, and there's a peach in it. His eyes hold hers as he bites into it, then flutter shut as the juice runs down that sharp chin, into the flurry of lace and cravat at his throat. When he swallows, she does too.

And then he holds it out to her.

He's standing much closer than she realised -- the room is bigger, or the mirrors are distorting the space, and she barely hesitates at all before leaning down to take a bite, laying it partially over his own. He smiles, and turns the peach, and takes another bite, and turns it in his hand. There are four bites, interlocked, encircled: two from each of them. The peach dissolves on her tongue, slick and sweet, and she's dizzy, hot, burning up with impatience.

"Yes. I mean no, I will --" everything of the other world, her brother, her acting career, the boyfriends she'd never slept with, the girlfriends she'd never confided in; her father, her stepmother patiently waiting in Nordstrom, rushes through her mind, and none of it weighs on her. She is free. "--I will stay."

His mouth tastes of peaches.


End file.
